ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ERIC FONER is DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University, where he earned his B.A. and Ph.D. In his teaching and scholarship, he focuses on the Civil War and Reconstruction, slavery, and nineteenth-century America. Professor Foner’s publications include Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party before the Civil War ; Tom Paine and Revolutionary America; Nothing but Freedom: Emancipation and Its Legacy; Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877; The Story of American Freedom; and Forever Free: The Story of Emancipation and Reconstruction. His history of Reconstruction won the Los Angeles Times Book Award for History, the Bancroft Prize, and the Parkman Prize. He has served as president of the Organization of American Historians and the American Historical Association. In 2006 he received the Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching from Columbia University. His most recent books are The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery, winner of the Bancroft and Lincoln Prizes and the Pulitzer Prize for History, and Gateway to Freedom: The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad, winner of the New York Historical Society Book Prize.
CONTENTS
About the Author ... v
List of Maps, Tables, and Figures ... xvi
Preface ... xviii
Acknowledgements ... xxv
1. A NEW WORLD ... 1
THE FIRST AMERICANS 3
The Settling of the Americas ... 3 Indian Societies of the Americas ... 3
Mound Builders of the Mississippi River Valley ... 5 Western Indians ... 6
Indians of Eastern North America ... 6 Native American Religion ... 7
Land and Property ... 9 Gender Relations ... 10 European Views of the Indians ... 10
INDIAN FREEDOM, EUROPEAN FREEDOM 11
Indian Freedom ... 11 Christian Liberty ... 12 Freedom and Authority ... 12 Liberty and Liberties ... 13
THE EXPANSION OF EUROPE ... 13
Chinese and Portuguese Navigation ... 14 Freedom and Slavery in Africa ... 14 The Voyages of Columbus ... 16
CONTACT 16
Columbus in the New World ...16 Exploration and Conquest ... 17
The Demographic Disaster ... 19
THE SPANISH EMPIRE ... 20
Governing Spanish America ... 20 Colonists and Indians in Spanish America ... 21 Justifications for Conquest ... 22 Reforming the Empire ... 24 Exploring North America ... 24 Spain in Florida and the Southwest ... 26 The Pueblo Revolt ... 27
Voices of Freedom: From Bartolomé de las Casas, History of the Indies (1528), and From “Declaration of Josephe” (December 19, 1681) ... 28
THE FRENCH AND DUTCH EMPIRES 30
French Colonization ... 30 New France and the Indians ... 32 The Dutch Empire ... 33 Dutch Freedom ... 34 The Dutch and Religious Toleration ... 34 Settling New Netherland ... 35 Features of European Settlement ... 35 Borderlands and Empire in Early America ... 36
REVIEW ... 37
2. BEGINNINGS OF ENGLISH AMERICA, 1607–1660 ... 38
ENGLAND AND THE NEW WORLD 40
Unifying the English Nation ... 40 England and Ireland ... 40
England and North America ... 40 Spreading Protestantism ... 41
The Social Crisis ... 42 Masterless Men ... 43
THE COMING OF THE ENGLISH ... 43
English Emigrants ... 43 Indentured Servants ... 44 Land and Liberty ... 44 Englishmen and Indians ... 45 The Transformation of Indian Life ... 45
SETTLING THE CHESAPEAKE 47
The Jamestown Colony ... 47 Powhatan and Pocahontas ... 48 The Uprising of 1622 ... 49 A Tobacco Colony ... 50 Women and the Family ... 50 The Maryland Experiment ... 51 Religion in Maryland ... 52
THE NEW ENGLAND WAY 52
The Rise of Puritanism ... 52 Moral Liberty ... 53 The Pilgrims at Plymouth ... 54 The Great Migration ... 55 The Puritan Family ... 55 Government and Society in Massachusetts ... 56 Church and State in Puritan Massachusetts ... 58
NEW ENGLANDERS DIVIDED ... 58
Roger Williams ... 59 Rhode Island and Connecticut ... 60 The Trial of Anne Hutchinson ... 60 Puritans and Indians ... 61 Voices of Freedom: From “The Trial of Anne Hutchinson” (1637), and From John Winthrop, Speech to the Massachusetts General Court (July 3, 1645) ... 62
The Pequot War ... 64 The New England Economy ... 65 A Growing Commercial Society ... 66
RELIGION, POLITICS, AND FREEDOM 67
The Rights of Englishmen ... 67 The English Civil War ... 68 England’s Debate over Freedom ... 68 The Civil War and English America ... 69 Cromwell and the Empire ... 70 REVIEW ... 71
3. CREATING ANGLO-AMERICA, 1660–1750 ... 72
GLOBAL COMPETITION AND THE EXPANSION OF ENGLAND’S EMPIRE ... 74
The Mercantilist System ... 74 The Conquest of New Netherland ... 74 New York and the Indians ... 76 The Charter of Liberties ... 77
The Founding of Carolina ... 77 The Holy Experiment ... 78 Land in Pennsylvania ... 79 ORIGINS OF AMERICAN SLAVERY 80
Englishmen and Africans ... 80 Slavery in History ... 81 Slavery in the West Indies ... 81 Slavery and the Law ... 82 The Rise of Chesapeake Slavery ... 83 Bacon’s Rebellion: Land and Labor in Virginia ... 83 A Slave Society ... 85 COLONIES IN CRISIS 86
The Glorious Revolution ... 86 The Glorious Revolution in America ... 87 The Salem Witch Trials ... 89
THE GROWTH OF COLONIAL AMERICA 90
A Diverse Population ... 90 The German Migration ... 91
Voices of Freedom: From Memorial against Non-English Immigration (December 1727), and From Letter by a Swiss-German Immigrant to Pennsylvania (August 23, 1769) ... 92
Religious Diversity ... 95 Indian Life in Transition ... 95 Regional Diversity ... 96 The Consumer Revolution ... 97 Colonial Cities ... 97
An Atlantic World ... 98
SOCIAL CLASSES IN THE COLONIES 99
The Colonial Elite ... 99 Anglicization ... 100 Poverty in the Colonies ... 100 The Middle Ranks ... 101 Women and the Household Economy ... 101 North America at Mid-Century ... 102
REVIEW ... 103
4. SLAVERY, FREEDOM, AND THE STRUGGLE FOR EMPIRE, TO 1763 ... 104
SLAVERY AND EMPIRE 106
Atlantic Trade ... 106 Africa and the Slave Trade ... 107 The Middle Passage ... 108 Chesapeake Slavery ... 109 The Rice Kingdom ... 110
The Georgia Experiment ... 111 Slavery in the North ... 112
SLAVE CULTURES AND SLAVE RESISTANCE 113
Becoming African-American ... 113 African Religion in Colonial America ... 113 African-American Cultures ... 114 Resistance to Slavery ... 115
AN EMPIRE OF FREEDOM 116
British Patriotism ... 116 The British Constitution ... 116 Republican Liberty ... 117 Liberal Freedom ... 117
THE PUBLIC SPHERE ... 118
The Right to Vote ... 118 Political Cultures ... 119 The Rise of the Assemblies ... 120 Politics in Public ... 121 The Colonial Press ... 121 Freedom of Expression and Its Limits ... 122 The Trial of Zenger ... 123 The American Enlightenment ... 123 THE GREAT AWAKENING 124
Religious Revivals ... 124 The Preaching of Whitefield ... 125 The Awakening’s Impact ... 125 IMPERIAL RIVALRIES 126
Spanish North America ... 126 The Spanish in California ... 128 The French Empire ... 130 BATTLE FOR THE CONTINENT 130
The Seven Years’ War ... 131 A World Transformed ... 132 Pontiac’s Rebellion ... 132 The Proclamation Line ... 133 Voices of Freedom: From Scarouyady, Speech to Pennsylvania Provincial Council (1756), and From Pontiac, Speeches (1762 and 1763) ... 134
Pennsylvania and the Indians ... 137 Colonial Identities ... 137 REVIEW ... 138
5. THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION, 1763–1783 ... 139
THE CRISIS BEGINS 140
Consolidating the Empire ... 140 Taxing the Colonies ... 142 Taxation and Representation ... 143 Liberty and Resistance ... 144 The Regulators ... 145
THE ROAD TO REVOLUTION 145
The Townshend Crisis ... 145 The Boston Massacre ... 146 Wilkes and Liberty ... 147 The Tea Act ... 148 The Intolerable Acts ... 148
THE COMING OF INDEPENDENCE 149
The Continental Congress ... 149 The Continental Association ... 150 The Sweets of Liberty ... 150 The Outbreak of War ... 151 Independence? ... 151 Paine’s Common Sense ... 152 The Declaration of Independence ... 153 An Asylum for Mankind ... 154
The Global Declaration of Independence ... 155
Voices of Freedom: From Samuel Seabury, An Alarm to the Legislature of the Province in New-York (1775), and From Thomas Paine, Common Sense (1776) 156
SECURING INDEPENDENCE 158
The Balance of Power ... 158 Blacks in the Revolution ... 159 The First Years of the War ... 159 The Battle of Saratoga ... 160 The War in the South ... 162 Victory at Last ... 164
REVIEW ... 166
6. THE REVOLUTION WITHIN ... 167
DEMOCRATIZING FREEDOM ... 169
The Dream of Equality ... 169 Expanding the Political Nation ... 169 The Revolution in Pennsylvania ... 170 The New Constitutions ... 171
The Right to Vote ... 171
TOWARD RELIGIOUS TOLERATION ... 172
Catholic Americans ... 173 Separating Church and State ... 173 Jefferson and Religious Liberty ... 174 Christian Republicanism ... 175 A Virtuous Citizenry ... 175
DEFINING ECONOMIC FREEDOM 176
Toward Free Labor ... 176 The Soul of a Republic ... 176 The Politics of Inflation ... 177 The Debate over Free Trade ... 178
THE LIMITS OF LIBERTY 178
Colonial Loyalists ... 178 The Loyalists’ Plight ... 179 The Indians’ Revolution ... 179
SLAVERY AND THE REVOLUTION 182
The Language of Slavery and Freedom ... 182 Obstacles to Abolition ... 182
The Cause of General Liberty ... 183 Petitions for Freedom ... 184 British Emancipators ... 185
Voices of Freedom: From Abigail Adams to John Adams, Braintree, Mass. (March 31, 1776), and From Petitions of Slaves to the Massachusetts Legislature (1773 and 1777) ... 186
Voluntary Emancipations ... 188 Abolition in the North ... 188 Free Black Communities ... 188
DAUGHTERS OF LIBERTY 189
Revolutionary Women ... 189 Republican Motherhood ... 190 The Arduous Struggle for Liberty ... 191
REVIEW ... 192
7. FOUNDING A NATION, 1783–1791 ... 193
AMERICA UNDER THE CONFEDERATION 195
The Articles of Confederation ... 195 Congress, Settlers, and the West ... 196 The Land Ordinances ... 198 The Confederation’s Weaknesses ... 200 Shays’s Rebellion ... 200 Nationalists of the 1780s ... 201
A NEW CONSTITUTION 202
The Structure of Government ... 202 The Limits of Democracy ... 203 The Division and Separation of Powers ... 204 The Debate over Slavery ... 205 Slavery in the Constitution ... 205 The Final Document ... 206 THE RATIFICATION DEBATE AND THE ORIGIN OF THE BILL OF RIGHTS 207
The Federalist ... 207 “Extend the Sphere” ... 208 The AntiFederalists ... 209
Voices of Freedom: From David Ramsay, The History of the American Revolution (1789), and From James Winthrop, Anti-Federalist Essay Signed “Agrippa” (1787) 210
The Bill of Rights ... 214 “WE THE PEOPLE” 215
National Identity ... 215 Indians in the New Nation ... 216 Blacks and the Republic ... 217 Jefferson, Slavery, and Race ... 218 Principles of Freedom ... 219 REVIEW ... 220
8. SECURING THE REPUBLIC, 1791–1815 ... 221
POLITICS IN AN AGE OF PASSION 222
Hamilton’s Program ... 223 The Emergence of Opposition ... 223 The Jefferson–Hamilton Bargain ... 224 The Impact of the French Revolution ... 225 Political Parties ... 226 The Whiskey Rebellion ... 226 The Republican Party ... 226 An Expanding Public Sphere ... 227
Voices of Freedom: From Judith Sargent Murray, “On the Equality of the Sexes” (1790), and From Address of the Democratic-Republican Society of Pennsylvania (December 18, 1794) 228
The Rights of Women ... 230
THE ADAMS PRESIDENCY 231
The Election of 1796 ... 231 The “Reign of Witches” ... 232 The Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions ... 233 The “Revolution of 1800” ... 233 Slavery and Politics ... 234 The Haitian Revolution ... 235
Gabriel’s Rebellion ... 235
JEFFERSON IN POWER 236
Judicial Review ... 237 The Louisiana Purchase ... 237 Lewis and Clark ... 238 Incorporating Louisiana ... 240 The Barbary Wars ... 240
The Embargo ... 241 Madison and Pressure for War ... 242
THE “SECOND WAR OF INDEPENDENCE” 242
The Indian Response ... 243 The War of 1812 ... 243 The War’s Aftermath ... 246 The War of 1812 and the Canadian Borderland ... 246
The End of the Federalist Party ... 247
REVIEW ... 248
9. THE MARKET REVOLUTION, 1800–1840 ... 249
A NEW ECONOMY 251
Roads and Steamboats ... 251 The Erie Canal ... 252 Railroads and the Telegraph ... 254 The Rise of the West ... 254 An Internal Borderland ... 256 The Cotton Kingdom ... 257 MARKET SOCIETY 260
Commercial Farmers ... 260 The Growth of Cities ... 260 The Factory System ... 261 The “Mill Girls” ... 263 The Growth of Immigration ... 264 The Rise of Nativism ... 265 The Transformation of Law ... 266 THE FREE INDIVIDUAL ... 267
The West and Freedom ... 267 The Transcendentalists ... 268 The Second Great Awakening ... 268 Voices of Freedom: From Recollections of Harriet L. Noble (1824), and From “Factory Life as It Is, by an Operative” (1845) 270 The Awakening’s Impact ... 272 The Emergence of Mormonism ... 272 THE LIMITS OF PROSPERITY ... 274 Liberty and Prosperity ... 274 Race and Opportunity ... 274 The Cult of Domesticity ... 275 Women and Work ... 276 The Early Labor Movement ... 277 The “Liberty of Living” ... 278 REVIEW ... 279
10. DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA, 1815–1840 ... 280
THE TRIUMPH OF DEMOCRACY 281
Property and Democracy ... 281 The Dorr War ... 282 Tocqueville on Democracy ... 282 The Information Revolution ... 283 The Limits of Democracy ... 284 A Racial Democracy ... 284 NATIONALISM AND ITS DISCONTENTS 285
The American System ... 285 Banks and Money ... 287 The Panic of 1819 ... 287 The Missouri Controversy ... 288
NATION, SECTION, AND PARTY 289
The United States and the Latin American Wars of Independence ... 289 The Monroe Doctrine ... 290 The Election of 1824 ... 291
Voices of Freedom: From The Memorial of the Non-Freeholders of the City of Richmond (1829), and From Appeal of Forty Thousand Citizens Threatened with Disfranchisement (1838) 292
The Nationalism of John Quincy Adams ... 294 “Liberty Is Power” ... 294 Martin Van Buren and the Democratic Party ... 294 The Election of 1828 ... 295
THE AGE OF JACKSON 296
The Party System ... 296 Democrats and Whigs ... 297 Public and Private Freedom ... 298 South Carolina and Nullification ... 299
Calhoun’s Political Theory ... 299 The Nullification Crisis ... 300
Indian Removal ... 301 The Supreme Court and the Indians ... 302
THE BANK WAR AND AFTER 304
Biddle’s Bank ... 304 The Pet Banks, the Economy, and the Panic of 1837 ... 306 Van Buren in Office ... 307 The Election of 1840 ... 307
REVIEW ... 310
11. THE PECULIAR INSTITUTION ... 311
THE OLD SOUTH ... 312
Cotton Is King ... 313 The Second Middle Passage ... 313 Slavery and the Nation ... 314 The Southern Economy ... 314 Plain Folk of the Old South ... 316 The Planter Class ... 317 The Paternalist Ethos ... 317 The Proslavery Argument ... 318 Abolition in the Americas ... 319 Slavery and Liberty ... 320
LIFE UNDER SLAVERY ... 321
Slaves and the Law ... 321 Conditions of Slave Life ... 321 Free Blacks in the Old South ... 322 Slave Labor ... 323 Slavery in the Cities ... 324 Maintaining Order ... 324
SLAVE CULTURE 325
The Slave Family ... 326 The Threat of Sale ... 326 Gender Roles among Slaves ... 327 Slave Religion ... 327 The Desire for Liberty ... 329 RESISTANCE TO SLAVERY 329 Forms of Resistance ... 330
Voices of Freedom: From Letter by Joseph Taper to Joseph Long (1840), and From “Slavery and the Bible” (1850) 332
The Amistad ... 334 Slave Revolts ... 334 Nat Turner’s Rebellion ... 335
REVIEW ... 337
12. AN AGE OF REFORM, 1820–1840 ... 338
THE REFORM IMPULSE 339
Utopian Communities ... 340 The Shakers ... 341 Oneida ... 342 Worldly Communities ... 342 Religion and Reform ... 343 Critics of
Reform ... 344 Reformers and Freedom ... 345 The Invention of the Asylum ... 345 The Common School ... 346
THE CRUSADE AGAINST SLAVERY 346
Colonization ... 346 Militant Abolitionism ... 347 Spreading the Abolitionist Message ... 348 Slavery and Moral Suasion ... 350 A New Vision of America ... 351
BLACK AND WHITE ABOLITIONISM 352
Black Abolitionists ... 352 Gentlemen of Property and Standing ... 353
THE ORIGINS OF FEMINISM 354
The Rise of the Public Woman ... 354 Women and Free Speech ... 355 Women’s Rights ... 355 Feminism and Freedom ... 356 Women and Work ... 357 The Slavery of Sex ... 357 “Social Freedom” ... 358
The Abolitionist Schism ... 359
Voices of Freedom: From Angelina Grimké, Letter in The Liberator (August 2, 1837), and From Catharine Beecher, An Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism (1837) 360
REVIEW ... 363
13. A HOUSE DIVIDED, 1840–1861 ... 364
FRUITS OF MANIFEST DESTINY ... 365
Continental Expansion ... 365 The Mexican Frontier: New Mexico and California ... 366 The Texas Revolt ... 367 The Election of 1844 ... 368 The Road to War ... 370 The War and Its Critics ... 370 Combat in Mexico ... 371 The Texas Borderland ... 373 Race and Manifest Destiny ... 374 Gold-Rush California ... 374 Opening Japan ... 376
A DOSE OF ARSENIC 377
The Wilmot Proviso ... 377 The Free Soil Appeal ... 378 Crisis and Compromise ... 378 The Great Debate ... 379 The Fugitive Slave Issue ... 380 Douglas and Popular Sovereignty ... 381 The KansasNebraska Act ... 381
THE RISE OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY 383
The Northern Economy ... 383 The Rise and Fall of the Know-Nothings ... 383 The Free Labor Ideology ... 386 “Bleeding Kansas” and the Election of 1856 ... 386
THE EMERGENCE OF LINCOLN 387
The Dred Scott Decision ... 388 Lincoln and Slavery ... 389 The Lincoln-Douglas Campaign ... 389
Voices of Freedom: From The Lincoln-Douglas Debates (1858) ... 390
John Brown at Harpers Ferry ... 392 The Rise of Southern Nationalism ... 393 The Election of 1860 ... 394
THE IMPENDING CRISIS 396
The Secession Movement ... 396 The Secession Crisis ... 397 And the War Came ... 398
REVIEW ... 400
14. A NEW BIRTH OF FREEDOM: THE CIVIL WAR, 1861–1865 ... 401
THE FIRST MODERN WAR 402
The Two Combatants ... 403 The Technology of War ... 404 The Public and the War ... 405 Mobilizing Resources ... 406 Military Strategies ... 406 The War Begins ... 407 The War in the East, 1862 ... 407 The War in the West ... 408
THE COMING OF EMANCIPATION 409
Slavery and the War ... 409 Steps toward Emancipation ... 411 Lincoln’s Decision ... 412 The Emancipation Proclamation ... 413
Enlisting Black Troops ... 415 The Black Soldier ... 415
THE SECOND AMERICAN REVOLUTION 416
Liberty, Union, and Nation ... 416 The War and American Religion ... 417
Voices of Freedom: From Frederick Douglass, Men of Color to Arms (1863), and From Abraham Lincoln, Address at Sanitary Fair, Baltimore (April 18, 1864) 418
Liberty in Wartime ... 420 The North’s Transformation ... 421 Government and the Economy ... 421 The West and the War ... 422
A New Financial System ... 424 Women and the War ... 426 The Divided North ... 426
THE CONFEDERATE NATION 428
Leadership and Government ... 428 The Inner Civil War ... 428 Economic Problems ... 429 Women and the Confederacy ... 430 Black Soldiers for the Confederacy ... 431
TURNING POINTS 432
Gettysburg and Vicksburg ... 432 1864 ... 433
REHEARSALS FOR RECONSTRUCTION AND THE END OF THE WAR 434
The Sea Islands Experiment ... 435 Wartime Reconstruction in the West ... 435 The Politics of Wartime Reconstruction ... 436 Victory at Last ... 436 The War and the World ... 439 The War in American History ... 439
REVIEW ... 440
15. “WHAT IS FREEDOM?”: RECONSTRUCTION, 1865–1877 ...
441
THE MEANING OF FREEDOM 443
Families in Freedom ... 443 Church and School ... 444 Political Freedom ... 444 Land, Labor, and Freedom ... 445 Masters without Slaves ... 445 The Free Labor Vision ... 447 The Freedmen’s Bureau ... 447 The Failure of Land Reform ... 448 The White Farmer ... 449
Voices of Freedom: From Petition of Committee in Behalf of the Freedmen to Andrew Johnson (1865), and From A Sharecropping Contract (1866) 450
The Aftermath of Slavery ... 453
THE MAKING OF RADICAL RECONSTRUCTION 454
Andrew Johnson ... 454 The Failure of Presidential Reconstruction ... 454 The Black Codes ... 455 The Radical Republicans ... 456 The Origins of Civil Rights ... 456 The Fourteenth Amendment ... 457 The Reconstruction Act ... 458 Impeachment and the Election of Grant ... 459 The Fifteenth Amendment ... 460 The “Great Constitutional Revolution” ... 460 The Rights of Women ... 461
RADICAL RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH 462
“The Tocsin of Freedom” ... 462 The Black Officeholder ... 464 Carpetbaggers and Scalawags ... 464 Southern Republicans in Power ... 465 The Quest for Prosperity ... 465
THE OVERTHROW OF RECONSTRUCTION 466
Reconstruction’s Opponents ... 466 “A Reign of Terror” 467 The Liberal Republicans ... 469 The North’s Retreat ... 470 The Triumph of the Redeemers ... 471 The Disputed Election and Bargain of 1877 ... 472 The End of Reconstruction ... 473 REVIEW ... 474
APPENDIX
DOCUMENTS
The Declaration of Independence (1776) ... A-2 The Constitution of the United States (1787) ... A-5 From George Washington’s Farewell Address (1796) ... A-17 The Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions (1848) ... A-22 From Frederick Douglass’s “What, to the Slave, Is the Fourth of July?” Speech (1852) ... A-25 The Gettysburg Address (1863) ... A-29 Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address (1865) ... A-30 The Populist Platform of 1892 ... A-31 Franklin D. Roosevelt’s First Inaugural Address (1933) ... A-34 From The Program for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom (1963) ... A-37 Ronald Reagan’s First Inaugural Address (1981) ... A-38 Barack Obama’s First Inaugural Address (2009) ... A-42 TABLES AND FIGURES
Presidential Elections ... A-46 Admission of States ... A-54
Population of the United States ... A-55
Historical Statistics of the United States: Labor Force—Selected Characteristics Expressed as a Percentage of the Labor Force, 1800–2010 ... A-56 Immigration, by Origin ... A-56 Unemployment Rate, 1890–2015 ... A-57 Union Membership as a Percentage of Nonagricultural Employment, 1880–2015 ... A-57 Voter Participation in Presidential Elections, 1824–2016 ... A-57 Birthrate, 1820–2015 ... A-57
SUGGESTED READING ... A-59
GLOSSARY ... A-73
CREDITS A-105
INDEX ... A-109
MAPS
CHAPTER 1
The First Americans . . . 4
Native Ways of Life, ca. 1500 8
The Old World on the Eve of American Colonization, ca. 1500 15
Voyages of Discovery 18
Early Spanish Conquests and Explorations in the New World 25
The New World—New France and New Netherland, ca. 1650 31
CHAPTER 2
English Settlement in the Chesapeake, ca. 1650 . . . 48
English Settlement in New England, ca. 1640 59
CHAPTER 3
Eastern North America in the Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries 75
European Settlement and Ethnic Diversity on the Atlantic Coast of North America, 1760 94
CHAPTER 4
Atlantic Trading Routes 107
The Slave Trade in the Atlantic World, 1460–1770 108
European Empires in North America, ca. 1750 129
Eastern North America after the Peace of Paris, 1763 . . . 136
CHAPTER 5
The Revolutionary War in the North, 1775–1781 161
The Revolutionary War in the South, 1775–1781 163
North America, 1783 . . . 165
CHAPTER 6
Loyalism in the American Revolution 180
xvi List of Maps, Tables, and Figures
CHAPTER 7
Western Lands, 1782–1802 197
Western Ordinances, 1784–1787 . . . 199
Ratification of the Constitution 213
CHAPTER 8
The Presidential Election of 1800 234
The Louisiana Purchase 239
The War of 1812 . . . 245
CHAPTER 9
The Market Revolution: Roads and Canals, 1840 253
Travel Times from New York City in 1800 and 1830 256
The Market Revolution: The Spread of Cotton Cultivation, 1820–1840 258
Cotton Mills, 1820s 263
CHAPTER 10
The Missouri Compromise, 1820 289
The Presidential Election of 1824 291
The Presidential Election of 1828 . . . 296
Indian Removals, 1830–1840 302
The Presidential Election of 1840 308
CHAPTER 11
Slave Population, 1860 315
Size of Slaveholdings, 1860 319
Major Crops of the South, 1860 . . . 325
Slave Resistance in the Nineteenth-Century Atlantic World 331
CHAPTER 12
Utopian Communities, Mid-Nineteenth Century 341
CHAPTER 13
The Trans-Mississippi West, 1830s–1840s . . . 367
The Mexican War, 1846–1848 372
Continental Expansion through 1853 373
The Kansas-Nebraska Act, 1854 382
The Railroad Network, 1850s . . . 384
The Presidential Election of 1856 387
The Presidential Election of 1860 394
CHAPTER 14
The Secession of Southern States, 1860–1861 403
The Civil War in the East, 1861–1862 408
The Civil War in the West, 1861–1862 . . . 410
The Emancipation Proclamation 413
The Civil War in the Western Territories, 1862–1864 425
The Civil War, 1863 433
The Civil War, Late 1864–1865 . . . 438
CHAPTER 15
The Barrow Plantation 446
Sharecropping in the South, 1880 452
The Presidential Election of 1868 . . . 460
Reconstruction in the South, 1867–1877 471
The Presidential Election of 1876 472
TABLES AND FIGURES
CHAPTER 1
Table 1.1 Estimated Regional Populations: The Americas, ca. 1500 19
Table 1.2 Estimated Regional Populations: The World, ca. 1500 20
CHAPTER 3
Table 3.1 Origins and Status of Migrants to British North American Colonies, 1700–1775 91
CHAPTER 4
Table 4.1 Slave Population as Percentage of Total Population of Original Thirteen Colonies, 1770 112
CHAPTER 7
Table 7.1 Total Population and Black Population of the United States, 1790 217
CHAPTER 9
Table 9.1 Population Growth of Selected Western States, 1800–1850 259
Table 9.2 Total Number of Immigrants by FiveYear Period 264
Figure 9.1 Sources of Immigration, 1850 265
CHAPTER 11
Table 11.1 Growth of the Slave Population 314
Table 11.2 Slaveholding, 1850 . . . 318
CHAPTER 14
Figure 14.1 Resources for War: Union versus Confederacy 406
PREFACE
Give Me Liberty! An American History is a survey of American history from the earliest days of European exploration and conquest of the New World to the first decades of the twenty-first century. It offers students a clear, concise narrative whose central theme is the changing contours of American freedom.
I am extremely gratified by the response to the first four editions of Give Me Liberty!, which have been used in survey courses at many hundreds of twoand four-year colleges and universities throughout the country. The comments I have received from instructors and students encourage me to think that Give Me Liberty! has worked well in their classrooms. Their comments have also included many valuable suggestions for revisions, which I greatly appreciate. These have ranged from corrections of typographical and factual errors to thoughts about subjects that needed more extensive treatment. In making revisions for this Fifth Edition, I have tried to take these suggestions into account. I have also incorporated the findings and insights of new scholarship that has appeared since the original edition was written.
The most significant changes in this Fifth Edition reflect my desire to integrate the history of the American West and especially the regions known as borderlands more fully into the narrative. In recent years these aspects of American history have been thriving areas of research and scholarship. Of course earlier editions of Give Me Liberty! have discussed these subjects, but
in this edition their treatment has been deepened and expanded. I have also added notable works in these areas to many chapter bibliographies and lists of websites.
The definition of the West has changed enormously in the course of American history. In the colonial period, the area beyond the Appalachians— present-day Kentucky, Tennessee, and western Pennsylvania and New York— constituted the West. In the first half of the nineteenth century, the term referred to Ohio, Michigan, Alabama, and Mississippi. After the Civil War, the West came to mean the area beyond the Mississippi River. Today, it is sometimes used to refer mainly to the Pacific coast. But whatever its geographic locale, the West has been as much an idea as a place—an area beyond the frontier of settlement that promised newcomers new kinds of freedom, sometimes at the expense of the freedom of others, such as native inhabitants and migrant laborers. In this edition we follow Americans as they constructed their Wests, and debated the kinds of freedom they would enjoy there.
Borderlands is a more complex idea that has influenced much recent historical scholarship. Borders are lines dividing one country, region, or state from another. Crossing them often means becoming subject to different laws and customs, and enjoying different degrees of freedom. Borderlands are regions that exist on both sides of borders. They are fluid areas where people of different cultural and social backgrounds converge. At various points in American history, shifting borders have opened new opportunities and closed off others in the borderlands. Families living for decades or centuries in a region have suddenly found themselves divided by a newly created border but still living in a borderland that transcends the new division. This happened to Mexicans in modern-day California, Arizona, and New Mexico, for example, in 1848, when the treaty ending the Mexican-American War transferred the land that would become those states from Mexico to the United States.
Borderlands exist within the United States as well as at the boundaries with other countries. For example, in the period before the Civil War, the region straddling the Ohio River contained cultural commonalities that in some ways overrode the division there between free and slave states. The borderlands idea also challenges simple accounts of national development in which empires and colonies pave the way for territorial expansion and a future transcontinental nation. It enables us, for example, to move beyond the categories of conquest and subjugation in understanding how Native Americans and Europeans interacted over the early centuries of contact. This approach also provides a way of understanding how the people of Mexico and the United States interact today in the borderland region of the American Southwest, where many families have members on both sides of the boundary between the two countries. Small changes relating to these themes may be found throughout the book. The major additions seeking to illuminate the history of the West and of borderlands are as follows:
Chapter 1 now introduces the idea of borderlands with a discussion of the areas where European empires and Indian groups interacted and where
authority was fluid and fragile. Chapter 4 contains expanded treatment of the part of the Spanish empire now comprising the borderlands United States (Arizona, California, New Mexico, Texas, and Florida) and how Spain endeavored, with limited success, to consolidate its authority in these regions. In Chapter 6, a new subsection, “The American Revolution as a Borderlands Conflict,” examines the impact on both Americans and Canadians of the creation, because of American independence, of a new national boundary separating what once had been two parts of the British empire. Chapter 8 continues this theme with a discussion of the borderlands aspects of the War of 1812. Chapter 9 discusses how a common culture came into being along the Ohio River in the early nineteenth century despite the existence of slavery on one side and free labor on the other. Chapter 13 expands the treatment of Texan independence from Mexico by discussing its impact on both Anglo and Mexican residents of this borderland region. Chapter 14 contains a new examination of the Civil War in the American West.
In Chapter 16, I have expanded the section on the industrial west with new discussions of logging and mining, and added a new subsection on the dissemination of a mythical image of the Wild West in the late nineteenth century. Chapter 17 contains an expanded discussion of Chinese immigrants in the West and the battle over exclusion and citizenship, a debate that centered on what kind of population should be allowed to inhabit the West and enjoy the opportunities the region offered. Chapter 18 examines Progressivism, countering conventional narratives that emphasize the origins of Progressive political reforms in eastern cities by relating how many, from woman suffrage to the initiative, referendum, and recall, emerged in Oregon, California, and other western states. Chapter 20 expands the treatment of western agriculture in the 1920s by highlighting the acceleration of agricultural mechanization in the region and the agricultural depression that preceded the general economic collapse of 1929 and after. In Chapter 22 we see the new employment opportunities for Mexican-American women in the war production factories that opened in the West. In Chapter 26, there is a new subsection on conservatism in the West and the Sagebrush Rebellion of the 1970s and 1980s. Chapter 27 returns to the borderlands theme by discussing the consequences of the creation, in the 1990s, of a free trade zone connecting the two sides of the Mexican-American border. And Chapters 27 and 28 now include expanded discussions of the southwestern borderland as a site of an acrimonious battle over immigration—legal and undocumented—involving the federal and state governments, private vigilantes, and continuing waves of people trying to cross into the United States. The contested borderland now extends many miles into the United States north of the boundary between the two nations, and southward well into Mexico and even Central America.
I have also added a number of new selections to Voices of Freedom, the paired excerpts from primary documents in each chapter. Some of the new documents reflect the stronger emphasis on the West and borderlands; others
seek to sharpen the juxtaposition of divergent concepts of freedom at particular moments in American history. And this edition contains many new images— paintings, broadsides, photographs, and others—related to these themes.
Americans have always had a divided attitude toward history. On the one hand, they tend to be remarkably future-oriented, dismissing events of even the recent past as “ancient history” and sometimes seeing history as a burden to be overcome, a prison from which to escape. On the other hand, like many other peoples, Americans have always looked to history for a sense of personal or group identity and of national cohesiveness. This is why so many Americans devote time and energy to tracing their family trees and why they visit historical museums and National Park Service historical sites in ever-increasing numbers. My hope is that this book will convince readers with all degrees of interest that history does matter to them.
The novelist and essayist James Baldwin once observed that history “does not refer merely, or even principally, to the past. On the contrary, the great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, [that] history is literally present in all that we do.” As Baldwin recognized, the force of history is evident in our own world. Especially in a political democracy like the United States, whose government is designed to rest on the consent of informed citizens, knowledge of the past is essential—not only for those of us whose profession is the teaching and writing of history, but for everyone. History, to be sure, does not offer simple lessons or immediate answers to current questions. Knowing the history of immigration to the United States, and all of the tensions, turmoil, and aspirations associated with it, for example, does not tell us what current immigration policy ought to be. But without that knowledge, we have no way of understanding which approaches have worked and which have not—essential information for the formulation of future public policy. History, it has been said, is what the present chooses to remember about the past. Rather than a fixed collection of facts, or a group of interpretations that cannot be challenged, our understanding of history is constantly changing. There is nothing unusual in the fact that each generation rewrites history to meet its own needs, or that scholars disagree among themselves on basic questions like the causes of the Civil War or the reasons for the Great Depression. Precisely because each generation asks different questions of the past, each generation formulates different answers. The past thirty years have witnessed a remarkable expansion of the scope of historical study. The experiences of groups neglected by earlier scholars, including women, African-Americans, working people, and others, have received unprecedented attention from historians. New subfields—social history, cultural history, and family history among them—have taken their place alongside traditional political and diplomatic history.
Give Me Liberty! draws on this voluminous historical literature to present an up-to-date and inclusive account of the American past, paying due attention
to the experience of diverse groups of Americans while in no way neglecting the events and processes Americans have experienced in common. It devotes serious attention to political, social, cultural, and economic history, and to their interconnections. The narrative brings together major events and prominent leaders with the many groups of ordinary people who make up American society. Give Me Liberty! has a rich cast of characters, from Thomas Jefferson to campaigners for woman suffrage, from Franklin D. Roosevelt to former slaves seeking to breathe meaning into emancipation during and after the Civil War.
Aimed at an audience of undergraduate students with little or no detailed knowledge of American history, Give Me Liberty! guides readers through the complexities of the subject without overwhelming them with excessive detail.
The unifying theme of freedom that runs through the text gives shape to the narrative and integrates the numerous strands that make up the American experience. This approach builds on that of my earlier book, The Story of American Freedom (1998), although Give Me Liberty! places events and personalities in the foreground and is more geared to the structure of the introductory survey course.
Freedom, and the battles to define its meaning, have long been central to my own scholarship and undergraduate teaching, which focuses on the nineteenth century and especially the era of the Civil War and Reconstruction (1850–1877). This was a time when the future of slavery tore the nation apart and emancipation produced a national debate over what rights the former slaves, and all Americans, should enjoy as free citizens. I have found that attention to clashing definitions of freedom and the struggles of different groups to achieve freedom as they understood it offers a way of making sense of the bitter battles and vast transformations of that pivotal era. I believe that the same is true for American history as a whole.
No idea is more fundamental to Americans’ sense of themselves as individuals and as a nation than freedom. The central term in our political language, freedom—or liberty, with which it is almost always used interchangeably—is deeply embedded in the record of our history and the language of everyday life. The Declaration of Independence lists liberty among mankind’s inalienable rights; the Constitution announces its purpose as securing liberty’s blessings. The United States fought the Civil War to bring about a new birth of freedom, World War II for the Four Freedoms, and the Cold War to defend the Free World. Americans’ love of liberty has been represented by liberty poles, liberty caps, and statues of liberty, and acted out by burning stamps and burning draft cards, by running away from slavery, and by demonstrating for the right to vote. “Every man in the street, white, black, red, or yellow,” wrote the educator and statesman Ralph Bunche in 1940, “knows that this is ‘the land of the free’ . . . ‘the cradle of liberty.’”
The very universality of the idea of freedom, however, can be misleading. Freedom is not a fixed, timeless category with a single unchanging definition. Indeed, the history of the United States is, in part, a story of debates, disagreements, and struggles over freedom. Crises like the American Revolution, the
Civil War, and the Cold War have permanently transformed the idea of freedom. So too have demands by various groups of Americans to enjoy greater freedom. The meaning of freedom has been constructed not only in congressional debates and political treatises, but on plantations and picket lines, in parlors and even bedrooms.
Over the course of our history, American freedom has been both a reality and a mythic ideal—a living truth for millions of Americans, a cruel mockery for others. For some, freedom has been what some scholars call a “habit of the heart,” an ideal so taken for granted that it is lived out but rarely analyzed. For others, freedom is not a birthright but a distant goal that has inspired great sacrifice.
Give Me Liberty! draws attention to three dimensions of freedom that have been critical in American history: (1) the meanings of freedom; (2) the social conditions that make freedom possible; and (3) the boundaries of freedom that determine who is entitled to enjoy freedom and who is not. All have changed over time.
In the era of the American Revolution, for example, freedom was primarily a set of rights enjoyed in public activity—the right of a community to be governed by laws to which its representatives had consented and of individuals to engage in religious worship without governmental interference. In the nineteenth century, freedom came to be closely identified with each person’s opportunity to develop to the fullest his or her innate talents. In the twentieth, the “ability to choose,” in both public and private life, became perhaps the dominant understanding of freedom. This development was encouraged by the explosive growth of the consumer marketplace (a development that receives considerable attention in Give Me Liberty!), which offered Americans an unprecedented array of goods with which to satisfy their needs and desires. During the 1960s, a crucial chapter in the history of American freedom, the idea of personal freedom was extended into virtually every realm, from attire and “lifestyle” to relations between the sexes. Thus, over time, more and more areas of life have been drawn into Americans’ debates about the meaning of freedom.
A second important dimension of freedom focuses on the social conditions necessary to allow freedom to flourish. What kinds of economic institutions and relationships best encourage individual freedom? In the colonial era and for more than a century after independence, the answer centered on economic autonomy, enshrined in the glorification of the independent small producer— the farmer, skilled craftsman, or shopkeeper—who did not have to depend on another person for his livelihood. As the industrial economy matured, new conceptions of economic freedom came to the fore: “liberty of contract” in the Gilded Age, “industrial freedom” (a say in corporate decision-making) in the Progressive era, economic security during the New Deal, and, more recently, the ability to enjoy mass consumption within a market economy.
The boundaries of freedom, the third dimension of this theme, have inspired some of the most intense struggles in American history. Although founded on the premise that liberty is an entitlement of all humanity, the
United States for much of its history deprived many of its own people of freedom. Non-whites have rarely enjoyed the same access to freedom as white Americans. The belief in equal opportunity as the birthright of all Americans has coexisted with persistent efforts to limit freedom by race, gender, and class and in other ways.
Less obvious, perhaps, is the fact that one person’s freedom has frequently been linked to another’s servitude. In the colonial era and nineteenth century, expanding freedom for many Americans rested on the lack of freedom—slavery, indentured servitude, the subordinate position of women—for others. By the same token, it has been through battles at the boundaries—the efforts of racial minorities, women, and others to secure greater freedom—that the meaning and experience of freedom have been deepened and the concept extended into new realms.
Time and again in American history, freedom has been transformed by the demands of excluded groups for inclusion. The idea of freedom as a universal birthright owes much both to abolitionists who sought to extend the blessings of liberty to blacks and to immigrant groups who insisted on full recognition as American citizens. The principle of equal protection of the law without regard to race, which became a central element of American freedom, arose from the antislavery struggle and the Civil War and was reinvigorated by the civil rights revolution of the 1960s, which called itself the “freedom movement.” The battle for the right of free speech by labor radicals and birth-control advocates in the first part of the twentieth century helped to make civil liberties an essential element of freedom for all Americans.
Although concentrating on events within the United States, Give Me Liberty! also situates American history in the context of developments in other parts of the world. Many of the forces that shaped American history, including the international migration of peoples, the development of slavery, the spread of democracy, and the expansion of capitalism, were worldwide processes not confined to the United States. Today, American ideas, culture, and economic and military power exert unprecedented influence throughout the world. But beginning with the earliest days of settlement, when European empires competed to colonize North America and enrich themselves from its trade, American history cannot be understood in isolation from its global setting.
Freedom is the oldest of clichés and the most modern of aspirations. At various times in our history, it has served as the rallying cry of the powerless and as a justification of the status quo. Freedom helps to bind our culture together and exposes the contradictions between what America claims to be and what it sometimes has been. American history is not a narrative of continual progress toward greater and greater freedom. As the abolitionist Thomas Wentworth Higginson noted after the Civil War, “revolutions may go backward.” Though freedom can be achieved, it may also be taken away. This happened, for example, when the equal rights granted to former slaves immediately after the Civil War were essentially nullified during the era of segregation. As was said in the eighteenth century, the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
In the early twenty-first century, freedom continues to play a central role in American political and social life and thought. It is invoked by individuals and groups of all kinds, from critics of economic globalization to those who seek to secure American freedom at home and export it abroad. I hope that Give Me Liberty! will offer beginning students a clear account of the course of American history, and of its central theme, freedom, which today remains as varied, contentious, and ever-changing as America itself.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
All works of history are, to a considerable extent, collaborative books, in that every writer builds on the research and writing of previous scholars. This is especially true of a textbook that covers the entire American experience, over more than five centuries. My greatest debt is to the innumerable historians on whose work I have drawn in preparing this volume. The Suggested Reading list for each chapter offers only a brief introduction to the vast body of historical scholarship that has influenced and informed this book. More specifically, however, I wish to thank the following scholars, who generously read portions of this work and offered valuable comments, criticisms, and suggestions:
Joel Benson, Northwest Missouri State University
Lori Bramson, Clark College
Tonia Compton, Columbia College
Adam Costanzo, Texas A&M University
Carl Creasman Jr., Valencia College
Blake Ellis, Lone Star College–CyFair
Carla Falkner, Northeast Mississippi Community College
Van Forsyth, Clark College
Aram Goudsouzian, University of Memphis
Michael Harkins, Harper College
Sandra Harvey, Lone Star College–CyFair
Robert Hines, Palo Alto College
Traci Hodgson, Chemeketa Community College
Tamora Hoskisson, Salt Lake Community College
William Jackson, Salt Lake Community College
Alfred H. Jones, State College of Florida
David Kiracofe, Tidewater Community College
Brad Lookingbill, Columbia College
Jennifer Macias, Salt Lake Community College
Thomas Massey, Cape Fear Community College
Derek Maxfield, Genesee Community College
Marianne McKnight, Salt Lake Community College
Jonson Miller, Drexel University
Ted Moore, Salt Lake Community College
Robert Pierce, Foothills College
Ernst Pinjing, Minot State University
Harvey N. Plaunt, El Paso Community College
Steve Porter, University of Cincinnati
John Putman, San Diego State University
R. Lynn Rainard, Tidewater Community College
Nicole Ribianszky, Georgia Gwinnett College
Nancy Marie Robertson, Indiana University—Purdue University
Indianapolis
John Shaw, Portland Community College
Danielle Swiontek, Santa Barbara Community College
Richard Trimble, Ocean County College
Alan Vangroll, Central Texas College
Eddie Weller, San Jacinto College
Andrew Wiese, San Diego State University
Matthew Zembo, Hudson Valley Community College
I am particularly grateful to my colleagues in the Columbia University Department of History: Pablo Piccato, for his advice on Latin American history; Evan Haefeli and Ellen Baker, who read and made many suggestions for improvements in their areas of expertise (colonial America and the history of the West, respectively); and Sarah Phillips, who offered advice on treating the history of the environment.
I am also deeply indebted to the graduate students at Columbia University’s Department of History who helped with this project. For this edition, Michael “Mookie” Kidackel offered invaluable assistance in gathering material related to borderlands and Western history. For previous editions, Theresa Ventura assisted in locating material for new sections placing American history in a global context, April Holm did the same for new coverage of the history of American religion and debates over religious freedom, James Delbourgo conducted research for the chapters on the colonial era, and Beverly Gage did the same for the twentieth century. In addition, Daniel Freund provided allaround research assistance. Victoria Cain did a superb job of locating images. I also want to thank my colleagues Elizabeth Blackmar and Alan Brinkley for offering advice and encouragement throughout the writing of this book. I am also grateful to students who, while using the textbook, pointed out to me errors or omissions that I have corrected in this edition: Jordan Farr, Chris Jendry, Rafi Metz, Samuel Phillips-Cooper, Richard Sereyko, and David Whittle.
Many thanks to Joshua Brown, director of the American Social History Project, whose website, History Matters, lists innumerable online resources for the study of American history. Thanks also to the instructors who helped build our robust digital resource and ancillary package. The new InQuizitive for History was developed by Tonia M. Compton (Columbia College), Matt Zembo (Hudson Valley Community College), Jodie Steeley (Merced Community College District), Bill Polasky (Stillman Valley High School), and Ken Adler (Spring Valley High School). Our new History Skills Tutorials were created by Geri Hastings. The Coursepack was thoroughly updated by Beth
Hunter (University of Alabama at Birmingham). Allison Faber (Texas A&M University) and Ben Williams (Texas A&M University) revised the Lecture PowerPoint slides. And our Test Bank and Instructor’s Manual was revised to include new questions authored by Robert O’Brien (Lone Star College–CyFair) and Tamora M. Hoskisson (Salt Lake Community College).
At W. W. Norton & Company, Steve Forman was an ideal editor—patient, encouraging, and always ready to offer sage advice. I would also like to thank Steve’s editorial assistants, Travis Carr and Kelly Rafey, and associate editor, Scott Sugarman, for their indispensable and always cheerful help on all aspects of the project; Ellen Lohman and Bob Byrne for their careful copyediting and proofreading work; Stephanie Romeo and Fay Torresyap for their resourceful attention to the illustrations program; Hope Miller Goodell and Chin-Yee Lai for their refinements of the book design; Leah Clark, Tiani Kennedy, and Debra Morton-Hoyt for splendid work on the covers for the Fifth Edition; Jennifer Barnhardt and Katie Callahan for keeping the many threads of the project aligned and then tying them together; Sean Mintus for his efficiency and care in book production; Laura Wilk for orchestrating the rich media package that accompanies the textbook; Jessica Brannon-Wranowsky for the terrific new web quizzes and outlines; Sarah England Bartley, Steve Dunn, and Mike Wright for their alert reads of the U.S. survey market and their hard work in helping establish Give Me Liberty! within it; and Drake McFeely, Roby Harrington, and Julia Reidhead for maintaining Norton as an independent, employee-owned publisher dedicated to excellence in its work.
Many students may have heard stories of how publishing companies alter the language and content of textbooks in an attempt to maximize sales and avoid alienating any potential reader. In this case, I can honestly say that W. W. Norton allowed me a free hand in writing the book and, apart from the usual editorial corrections, did not try to influence its content at all. For this I thank them, while I accept full responsibility for the interpretations presented and for any errors the book may contain. Since no book of this length can be entirely free of mistakes, I welcome readers to send me corrections at ef17@columbia .edu.
My greatest debt, as always, is to my family—my wife, Lynn Garafola, for her good-natured support while I was preoccupied by a project that consumed more than its fair share of my time and energy, and my daughter, Daria, who while a ninth and tenth grader read every chapter as it was written and offered invaluable suggestions about improving the book’s clarity, logic, and grammar.
Eric Foner
New York City July 2016
